We can now add a new Microsoft policy of punishing account users who use “offensive language” while logged into one of their products or services to the growing list of draconian measures employed by tech companies to police online content.
In a release summarizing the new policy, which will go into effect May 1, Microsoft stated:
“In the Code of Conduct section, we’ve clarified that use of offensive language and fraudulent activity is prohibited.”
Microsoft stated that they may temporarily suspend or boot offending users permanently from their products. They also reserve the right to search through user content.
The company’s code of conduct was written to crack down on spam, the transmission of malware, child exploitation, and illegal activity. So far, Microsoft has not been explicit about what will constitute offensive language.
Users expect the policy to have the biggest effect on Xbox Live players, who are known to troll each other during games. But other Microsoft customers worry the new code of conduct could restrict free speech on platforms like Skype and OneDrive.
Civil rights activist Jonathan Corbett challenged the company in a blog post, writing:
“So wait a sec: I can’t use Skype to have an adult video call with my girlfriend? I can’t use OneDrive to back up a document that says ‘fuck’ in it? What’s clear here is that Microsoft is reserving the right to cancel your account whenever they feel like it.”
While users commenting on Reddit claim the policy is really nothing new, many Microsoft customers and tech users fear the move is a pretext for censoring people. It adds to an intensifying debate regarding tech companies and social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google tweaking their algorithms to control page reach and enacting measures that restrict creative expression and free speech. Some journalists claim the Big 5 tech companies — Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon — as well as other information gatekeepers, are taking censorship cues from Washington lawmakers and acting as the de facto face of repressive government.
With the recent leak of the “Google Manifesto” and the maelstrom of media backlash that followed, Visual Capitalist"s Jeff Desjardins notes that it seems that concerns around diversity in the technology industry have finally reached a boiling point.
Today’s infographic from Information is Beautiful breaks down the demographics of 23 major tech companies, based on statistics from 2016. It also provides comparisons to the composition of the U.S. population in general, the top 50 U.S. companies, Congress, and Fortune 500 CEOs.
WHICH COMPANIES EMPLOY THE MOST WOMEN?
With just a focus on the major companies on this list, here is a breakdown that shows which companies employ the most women:
The above list already illustrates why diversity is such a concern for many observers of the industry: even the companies with the most women on their rosters have proportions lower than U.S. population average of 50%.
In contrast, here are the companies on the list that employ the fewest women, as a proportion of their workforce:
Google, which is at the center of debate right now, did not make the list of the companies with the fewest women – but it’s not far off with a workforce comprised of 31% women.
WHAT’S CHANGED IN THE LAST 12 MONTHS?
According to Information is Beautiful, here is what has changed in the last 12 months as of their last update (April 2017):
Facebook, Apple, eBay, and Microsoft all had their ratio of women increase by 1%.
LinkedIn had their ratio of women increase by 3%.
Google’s gender ratio stayed the same.
Microsoft increased the ratio of non-white employees by 3%, and Facebook by 2%.
Google, Apple, and eBay increased ratio of non-white employees by 1%.
LinkedIn lost 3% of its non-white employees.
Asian staff accounted for the majority of increases in ethnic diversity, while the ratio of Hispanic employees remained static.
To get an even better sense of the data, we recommend visiting the interactive version of Information is Beautiful’s graphic, which shows numbers for 2014 and 2015 as well.
Although many of the devices listed below may be confined to your garages or dusty drawers, as Visual Capitalist"s Chris Matei notes, the influence they had on modern technology is pretty much unsurpassed.
Today’s infographic from Safe Company is a throwback to the 1980s and 1990s, making us nostalgic for the heyday of these popular gadgets.
TECH GOES MOBILE
The gadgets of the 80s and 90s were all about taking existing technology and making it more enjoyable while on the go, rather than solely being useful in the home or office. Even if that meant devices that were “portable” in name only, it was a huge step forward.
Devices like the Game Boy, Walkman, early Nokia phones, and other mobile technologies helped lead engineers to solve the problems that would lay the ground for today’s “world in the palm of your hand”. Improving power consumption efficiency, developing new battery types, reducing size, creating screens that were readable in a variety of light conditions, and even opening up the demand for aftermarket accessories were among these advancements.
BROADENING MEDIA ACCESS
The latter 20th century will be remembered for democratizing access to all kinds of information, both for work and for play. Technologies of the 90s set a precedent for the bite-sized span of modern digital attention. Microsoft’s Encarta encyclopedia suite allowed comprehensive keyword search before the optimization of online alternatives. Simply type a word, and get every piece of information related to it – without the need to purchase updated versions including new data each year. It sounds almost comical to tout these as features in the age of Google, but compare Encarta to the alternative: carrying around a set of Encyclopedias!
On the leisure side, the wildly faddish Tamagotchi feels like a forebear of 2010-era mobile games – cleverly designed to create a cycle of short, addictive bursts of play with a low cost of access. The ever beeping, cutesy reward loop of caring for your Tamagotchi may have annoyed a generation of parents, but it inspired a whole genre of bite-size digital entertainment.
Even the Walkman launched a new frontier of access to media through the creative possibilities of mixtape-making, bootlegging, and sharing tapes. I’m sure anyone who grew up in the 80s and 90s had a shoebox full of favorite tracks taped from radio and vinyl… or was that just me?
OLD TECH, LASTING IMPACT
Though it is easy to downplay the quaint technologies that came nearly thirty years ago, we can’t ignore that its influence is in the DNA of the devices and digital interactions we encounter every day. Go back through your closets, dig out your Game Boy, and take a trip back in time to remember the curiosities and comforts of old-school tech!
Nasdaq has issued a market-wide trading halt amid what appears to be a "glitch" that sent a number of the largest Nasdaq-listed stocks to crash or spike to exactly $123.47 per share.
This move crashed the value of companies including Amazon and Apple, sparked chaos in Microsoft, while sending Zynga rocketing up more than 3000%.
On the eve of the US Independence Day holiday and in after-hours trading, The FT reports that market data show that companies such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, eBay and Zynga were repriced at $123.47.
The Bloomberg data terminal listed either “market wide circuit breaker halt — level 2” or “volatility trading pause” on all the stocks affected.
The glitch did not affect any market trading, including after hours.
The mysterious reset to $123.47 per share meant that Amazon in theory saw its share price marked down 87.2 per cent...
while shares in Apple fell 14.3 per cent...
But Nasdaq-listed Microsoft had jumped 79.1 per cent — which would value the company at nearly $1tn...
As Bloomberg reports,the apparent swings triggered trading halts in some securities, according to automatically generated messages. The halts are a mechanism exchanges use to limit the impact of particularly volatile sessions. A system status alert on Nasdaq’s website said that systems were operating normally at 8:23 p.m. ET. After-market hours on Nasdaq typically last from 4 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
In a statement, Nasdaq said the glitch was related to “improper use of test data” sent out to third party data providers, and said it was working to “ensure a prompt resolution of this matter”. In cases of any clearly erroneous data, trades made are cancelled.
Recently, an installment of WikiLeaks’ Vault7 documents came to light that exposed two CIA malware programs that specifically infect Microsoft computers with the purpose of carrying out tasks on infected computers, checking for scheduled events, and collecting data.
The revelation put Microsoft in the hot seat, with people speculating that the tech giant may have been aware that the CIA works with features specifically built into Microsoft computers to collect data and perform tasks.
Microsoft’s history would suggest the worst, from Edward Snowden’s 2013 leaks that revealed Microsoft had “collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users’ communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company’s own encryption,” to the NSA bragging about their newly acquired ability to triple the amount of Skype video calls being collected through Prism just nine months after Microsoft bought Skype.
Microsoft’s CEO had an intriguing and controversial response to the new WikiLeaks documents. At the company’s 2017 Build conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned the technology industry against creating a dystopian future, which authors including George Orwell and Aldous Huxley have predicted in the past.
“I’m an unrepentant tech optimist, there’s no question of that,” said Nadella. “But I’m also grounded. There are unintended consequences of technology.
“And it’s not that we can just use more technology to solve those problems, and technologies by themselves cannot solve these. But I do believe that it’s up to us to ensure that some of the more dystopian scenarios don’t come true.”
The main screen in the conference hall then lit up with Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World.
“[Think about] what Orwell prophesied in 1984, where technology was being used to monitor, control, dictate,” said Nadella. “Or what Huxley imagined we may do by just distracting ourselves without any meaning or purpose.
“Neither of these futures is something that we want. So the question is: what are we going to do? Are there practical ways we can make progress?”
He urged the importance of people trusting in technology.
“I think it starts with us taking accountability. Taking accountability for the algorithms we create, the experiences that we create, and ensuring that there is more trust in technology with each day.”
“We want to think about people,” Nadella concluded. “But we also want to think about the institutions people build.”
While well-spoken, is it possible that Nadella’s words are empty, and merely just a diversion from the truth? Examining Microsoft’s history, and acknowledging how much the company has worked with the government, it seems possible Nadella is only trying to keep people from realizing Microsoft is, indeed, prepared for such an Orwellian future.
Hitting record high after record high, tech companies have displaced traditional blue chip companies like Exxon Mobil and Walmart as the most valuable companies in the world.
Here are the latest market valuations for those same five companies:
Together, they are worth $2.9 trillion in market capitalization – and they combined in FY2016 for revenues of $555 billion with a $94 billion bottom line.
In 2016, Apple experienced its first annual revenue decline since 2001, but the company brought home a profit equal to that of all other four companies combined.
On the other hand, Amazon is becoming a revenue machine with very little margin, while Facebook generates 5x more profit despite far smaller top line numbers.
HOW THEY MAKE THEIR BILLIONS
Each of these companies is pretty unique in how they generate revenue, though there is some overlap:
Facebook and Alphabet each make the vast majority of their revenues from advertising (97% and 88%, respectively)
Apple makes 63% of their revenue from the iPhone, and another 21% coming from the iPad and Mac lines
Amazon makes 90% from its “Product” and “Media” categories, and 9% from AWS
Microsoft is diverse: Office (28%), servers (22%), Xbox (11%), Windows (9%), ads (7%), Surface (5%), and other (18%)
What does that look like?
Lastly, for fun, what if we added all these companies’ revenues together, and categorized them by source?
Note: this isn’t perfect. As an example, Amazon’s fast-growing advertising business gets lumped into their “Other” category.
Hardware, e-commerce, and and advertising make up 76% of all revenues.
Meanwhile, software isn’t the cash cow it used to be, but it does help serve as a means to an end for some companies. For example, Android doesn’t generate any revenue directly, but it does allow more users to buy apps in the Play Store and to search Google via their mobile devices. Likewise, Apple bundles in operating systems with each hardware purchase.
The NSA is to blame for the ransomware that spread worldwide in recent days and hit Britain’s hospitals and even FedEx, Microsoft is alleging.
“The WannaCrypt exploits used in the attack were drawn from the exploits stolen from the National Security Agency, or NSA, in the United States,” Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith wrote in a May 14 blog post. “An equivalent scenario with conventional weapons would be the U.S. military having some of its Tomahawk missiles stolen.”
Smith is referring to the Wannacry ransomware, which froze computers and disrupted service at several hospitals run by Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). The attack caused emergency rooms to turn away ambulances and led to the cancellation of some operations, The Guardian reported.
Wannacry takes over computers and demands that users pay $300 in bitcoin to get access to their own data. The NHS was simply one of many victims of Friday’s cyberwarfare attack. The attack is one of the largest in history and may have affected 200,000 computers in 150 countries, the Europol law enforcement agency estimated.
The ransomware took advantage of a weakness in the Microsoft operating system – a weakness that the NSA knew about but decided to keep to itself so it could use it to penetrate computers.
“We have seen vulnerabilities stored by the CIA show up on WikiLeaks, and now this vulnerability stolen from the NSA has affected customers around the world,” Smith wrote. “Repeatedly, exploits in the hands of governments have leaked into the public domain and caused widespread damage. … And this most recent attack represents a completely unintended but disconcerting link between the two most serious forms of cybersecurity threats in the world today – nation-state action and organized criminal action.”
The NSA and CIA should alert software companies of weaknesses so they can be fixed, he added.
“The governments of the world should treat this attack as a wake-up call,” Smith wrote. “They need to take a different approach and adhere in cyberspace to the same rules applied to weapons in the physical world. We need governments to consider the damage to civilians that comes from hoarding these vulnerabilities and the use of these exploits.”
What is your reaction? Share it in the section below:
According to a startling new report, if you use Windows 10, every, single keystroke you’ve ever entered on your computer has been logged.
If that weren’t alarming enough to the privacy-minded among us, all of that information is being sent directly to Microsoft.
All of which begs the question, is this why Microsoft was so insistent its users download Windows 10 as soon as it became available?
“You know those nagging questions during the installation process that ask you whether or not you want to ‘help’ improve Windows by sending data to Microsoft? If you happened to answer ‘yes’ to one of these questions, or if you went with the Microsoft default installation, there is a real possibility that everything you have done on your computer from the get-go, including sending ‘secure’ messages (because the keyboard logger captures your keystrokes before they appear in your secure messaging app), is now a part of a massive user database somewhere,”reportsSHTFPlan.com.
“It’s been reported that Microsoft has been using the data to improve artificial intelligence writing and grammar software, but it’s not clear what else they are doing with it.”
Unlike recent headlines of security breaches, hacks, and compromised database information, this rather contentious little issue has a few rather simple solutions.
If you have yet to upgrade to Windows 10, you’re in luck — just select “custom install” and make sure to check “no” for each of the questions asked about sending information out to Microsoft or any third party.
“To find out whether everything you type is being logged, SHTFPlan notes,
Simply click on your Windows 10 Start Menu. From there, go to Settings (or the gear icon) -> Privacy -> General.
You’ll want to turn off the option that says, ‘Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future.’
READ MORE:It"s Official: NSA Data Will be Used for Domestic Policing that Has Nothing to Do With Terrorism
International Business Timesexplainswhat to do if you’ve already upgraded:
If you have Windows 10 installed, then you need to go to the Start menu and then select Settings > Privacy > General. Turn off the option that reads, ‘Send Microsoft info about how I write to help us improve typing and writing in the future’. To be safe, restart your computer after selecting this option.
For those with technical knowledge, there are additional steps you can take to eradicate the gossip line between your computer and Microsoft — but they come with the caveat the methods have been discovered by the Windows 10 users community, so they cannot be guaranteed to be safe or effective.
Windows Update MiniTool
“The Windows Update MiniTool freeware by MajorGeeks allows users to check for Windows Updates and see a description of what they do. You can decide whether you want to install the available updates, hide the ones you don’t like and even delete updates that have been installed that you disagree with,” IBT explains.
This software explains software updates simply and makes an uninstall easy if necessary.
Reduce Updates
By reducing the number of extraneous updates Microsoft sends your computer — keeping vital security patches and the like — users with low bandwidth have an option.
“To do this, go to the Start menu and then select Settings > Network & Internet > Wi-Fi. In Wi-Fi, click ‘Advanced Options’ and then select ‘on’ for the option ‘Set as metered connection’.”
Turn Off All Updates
Although this method is not at all advised and thus must be done at your own risk, “Go to the Start menu and type ‘Run’ in the search field. Click on the program, type ‘services.msc’ and then click ‘OK’. Look in the list of services, find the ‘Windows Update’ listing and double-click on it. Click on the drop down menu for ‘Startup type’ and select ‘Disabled’, then click OK to confirm and restart your computer.”
While these fixes might take Microsoft’s nose out of your business, keep in mind we have recently become privy to the CIA’s egregiously invasive spying program — a mirror twin of the already-dubious NSA domestic spy dragnet and more.
(INTELLIHUB) — Despite his “commendable efforts” to distribute his wealth to various philanthropic projects around the world, Bill Gates still remains the richest person on the planet with an estimated net worth of $75B USD putting him well ahead of fellow globalist cabal members Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffet.
A report by Oxfam said Gates’ fortune has risen 50 percent — the equivalent of $25B since he stepped from his full-time position at Microsoft in 2006. The report stated if billionaires like Gates continue to secure these returns “we could see the world’s first trillionaire in 25 years.”
“If you are already rich you have to try hard not to keep getting a lot richer,” the humanitarian organization said.
Oxfam said that all together, the world’s eight billionaires have as much wealth as the roughly 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of the world’s entire population.
Gates is predicted to hit the trillion mark by the age of 86 but is unlikely to leave much of it in his will. With a fortune like that, you’d expect his own three children to get a generous legacy. But no, the 61-year-old computer pioneer says it’s not a “favor” for any of his kids to have “huge sums of wealth” pledging instead to give away his fortune to some undisclosed charity of his own choosing.
“Our kids will receive a great education and some money so they are never going to be poorly off but they’ll go out and have their own career,” he said.
He said wealth might “distort anything they might do” and wants them to create “their own path.” That’s because he himself is a living example of a person whose wealth has distorted everything that he’s done (we’ll get into that in a moment).
You see, according to sources, the Gates have a terrible track record of crimes against humanity. In November 2016, in a Natural Newsreport, I slammed Obama’s awarding them both the Presidential Medal of Freedom for nothing — a medal that neither of them were anywhere near close to deserving.
In 2000, Bill and his wife Melinda set up the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which, so far, has given away $28B billion in the fight against global poverty. The foundation was expanded exponentially with the help of fellow billionaire elites including Warren Buffet (who significantly funded the baby-murdering Planned Parenthood organization) and David Rockefeller (a Bilderberg group attendee and a key member of the globalist cabal). Of course, such affiliation with those two other elites (both of whom have well-documented criminal histories) alone should immediately trigger warning alarms to the discerning individual
The billionaire who lives in the comfort of a 66,000 square foot mansion — which cost over $63M to build — nested in the picturesque backcountry of Medina, Washington also laughably offered some “advice” for the world’s poorest in an absolutely bizarre blog post, telling people that raising chickens is the key to prosperity.
Let’s take a quick look at some of their “contributions to the advancement of humanity”…
Gates is a major proponent of zero population growth (ZPG) and the “reduction” of the world’s population by at least 10-15% in order to “stabilize” it, as seen in Shepard Ambellas’ and Jason Bermas’ documentary film’s Shade the Motion Picture (2013). Toward that end, Gates champions and funds vaccines, healthcare, and reproductive “health services” which are very deliberately packaged to sound good on the outside but really are just pure evil on the inside.
Specifically, vaccines, Gates believes are the “best way to depopulate [an] overcrowded world” with at least 350,000 people to be killed per day to accomplish that goal.
Put simply, the vaccine programs he funds are nothing less an evil eugenics program designed to eliminate what he believes as the undesirables of the earth. Gates’ campaigns disguised as epidemic-preventing measures can easily be considered as the spear tip of the United Nation’s Agenda 21 “Sustainable Development Plan”.
In fact, Gates has even publicly declared, in a CNN video available on DailyMotion, that vaccines injected into children in 3rd world countries (disguised as an antidote for the high child mortality rate in these regions) are used to “reduce population growth.”
The horrific consequences of Gates’ botched vaccination programs are quite evident. For example, a polio vaccine that was implemented in India reportedly caused 47,500 cases of severe paralysis.
According to at least one report released by nsnbc ìternational, Bill Gates paid big money to leading Bollywood stars to promote the case for polio vaccination and get the poor people to fall for the propaganda — which they did like hungry mice. In other words, if true, Gates deliberately preyed on uneducated, gullible Indians using revered TV stars to convince them to be the guinea pigs for his experimental world depopulation program.
Now, as if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out that the company which released genetically engineered (GE) mosquitoes carrying Oxitec, the Zika virus, into Brazil was funded by Bill Gates. The 2015-16 Zika virus epidemic has been responsible for a steep rise in birth defects such as microcephaly, which is a neurological condition that causes unborn babies’ heads and brains to be unusually small.
Planned Parenthood (which I will remind you was funded by Gates’ billionaire friends) conveniently used the fear and hype created by the corporate media (tools of the globalist elite) in the wake of the epidemic to scare women into aborting their unborn babies without knowing if they actually had Zika or not. Planned Parenthood, which is actually a money-making machine, not the non-profit organization they are purported to be, had in excess of $58.8 million in revenue and $1.7B in assets during the 2014- 15 financial year. This is inarguably blood money at its worst.
Gates made headlines in 2015 after introducing a plan to implement a cashless system in multiple third-world countries, a program that would undoubtedly give financial elites total control over monetary systems. Again, a program that sounds wonderful and benevolent on the surface yet has sinister motives behind it.
Gates has also called for a one world government — an agenda of the New World Order which pushes for globalization and the physical and mental enslavement of all human beings. He has disguised this nefarious agenda, which he says is “badly needed,” as a plausible way to combat an array of “issues” ailing the planet including “”climate change” (which, by the way, is a nonexistent issue).
In 2010, he attended the top-secret and obscure Bilderberg Group — a secret conference held annually at different locations around the world where key members of the globalist Illuminati cabal meet together to plot and plan their Satanic schemes for the year and beyond. Gates is one of the very few globalist figures who has openly admitted to attending the exclusive club. Up until 2012, the meeting received absolutely zero media coverage until independent media reporters including Alex Jones, Intellihub’s Shep Ambellas and Alex Thomas, and Luke Rudkowski began to expose what was going inside to confab.
Not only does the Gates Foundation throw its weight around inside the healthcare industry, it has also extended its tentacles into the food production industry. Bill Gates owns more than $23M worth or 500,000 Monsanto shares. Monsanto is the world’s largest producer of genetically modified food, which has been tied to numerous health ailments such as sterility and infant mortality, amongst many others.
These monstrosities being forced on the world by Gates are a total fulfillment of George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
Let that sink in.
Caleb Stephen is a freelance journalist, independent commentator, political activist and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Caleb Report (Calebreport.com) He is also a contributing writer and editor of WeAreChange.org.
